Articles by section: business

Task: Represent SEM and STEM at Earth Day 2015

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles came by our booth where we were representing our
Science and Engineering Magnet High School and sharing our STEM message with the community. Ms. Huitt,
our principal was also there. Unfortunately we forgot to take any video while inside. Above Tycho is
visiting with the solar car team from Ben Barber Tech in Mansfield.

Reflections

Traffic was not great where our booth
was, but we still got a lot of interest in our robot. We brought a subset of the field so that we could
demonstrate better, and we linked the robot to the earth day theme by portraying the balls as debris
that needs to be cleared after an environmental disaster.

Task: Present at the Dallas City of Learning Discovery Faire

"Kids are invited to “Turn Up!” to make, create, craft, play and learn at the Dallas Public Library on Saturday June 20. The Dallas City of Learning free family event will be from 1 to 4 p.m. on various floors at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, 1515 Young St." Quote from Dallas City News Article

Iron Reign was one of many presenters at the Discovery Faire, showing various robots to curious kids and parents. We were on the top floor, and after rolling up assorted robots from the team's past years, we were set up across from Polyprinter people. Although it took a while for visitors to make their way up to us, we were working with and talking to a large crowd at the peak.

Reflections

We set up multiple places for people to interact with. In the right-hand corner of our area we had a sumo field with 2 or 3 smaller lego robots running. On our main table we had our coca-cola cube 3d printer we won from an earlier grant, and the beginning of Argos was set up. Currently Argos uses color blob detection to follow a selected color from an android phone. Right now the phone is mounted on two servos and swivels in the direction of the color. Minion, our robotic "dog" was being driven by Tycho and was going around the whole area. A lot of kids wanted to try driving him around, and Tycho attempted to teach them the leash based controls.

The main attraction was our season robot, which was set up with a few foam tiles, a rolling goal, and a bunch of plastic balls in a box. We followed he path of the balls through the beater bar, into the chute, up the ski lift, and off the backboard into the tall rolling goal. We seemed to do better here than in any previous competition! A crowd of kids surrounded the robot, and while it was originally being driven around, we decided to keep it stationary later, only running the collection and scoring motors. It was hard to keep their hands away from the ski lift, something that could be broken easily, and that could potentially hook onto sweaters or necklaces. We told them to roll the balls towards the beater bar and watch as they travelled up and (hopefully) into the goals. They seemed really interested and engaged as we got a combo going, and started cheering as goals were made.

A lot of parents came by the booth, and we were distributing fliers and information for our high school, The Science and Engineering Magnet. Many asked question about the curriculum, entrance requirements, and robotics opportunities there. Parents of younger children asked for suggestions on how to become involved in robotics with their kids, and we suggested looking for FLL teams in their middle schools and scouting troops.

Task: Represent SEM and STEM at Moonday 2015

The Frontiers of Flight Museum hosts an event every year called Moon Day that exhibits a lot of STEM topics to anyone who drops by. Iron Reign always has a booth with DPRG and exhibits most of the previous robots and topics that
we've been involved in. This year we showed off Argos and Kibosh in particular, also having GyroBoy as an example based off our presentation given to the DPRG just the previous week. We had our booth where we presented our robots and also had a seperate team walking around, showing off Argos and Minion. We were able to talk to many people, both young and old, and we impressed upon these people the importance of what we're doing and how the
STEM fields could affect them. We impressed a couple engineers that came over with one of them exclaiming: "Man, kids used to mess with their dolls and toys, you guys do things that we weren't able to until late college!"

Reflections

Our opportunity to talk to both kids and adults experienced in the STEM fields, and leave an impression on both, is something that has come to define this team. To get kids excited about what we do and start getting them to see if they have any interest, helps us prepare them for their future in their early age. Meanwhile, to be able to learn from other engineers and take advice from their experience helps prepare us for our future.

Task: Share what we've learned about motion sensing

On July 11th we gave a talk for a classroom full of adult members of the
Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG)
where we shared what we've learned and are still
learning about motion sensors, particularly gyros. The talk took place at the
Dallas Makerspace. Our thanks to DPRG, Steve and Doug for hosting us and recording
and editing the video. The presentation slides can be
downloaded here. We hope this
helps other FTC teams who are exploring the same subject.

Reflections

We are fairly happy with how the presentation went. We made a few mistakes and
omissions in our talk and could improve our delivery.
We should probably have added one last slide of "dos and don'ts" to make it simpler for teams that are just starting with gyros, so we'll do that in a follow-up post.

So it seems that using this phone with Google Cardboard leads to a very jerky
experience that probably means difficulty using it on a robot. But it's also possible
that the gyro is fine and it's the built-in sensor fusion with the accelerometers and
magnetometers that is the problem. We are interested in feedback from other teams
that have this phone to see what they think of its gyro. We know of at least one other
team that is planning to test this phone's gyro.

We are also interested in feedback from other teams on which external gyro they plan
to use. The easy choice is the hitechnic gyro that we've mostly used in the past. But
the truth is that it is a very drifty gyro and there are probably better choices out
there now. We are looking at a few ourselves and plan to post the results.

We estimate we've put about 90 person hours over 3 meets and a lot of homework
into this presentation. And that doesn't count
the time we've put into actually learning how to use gyros from sensing through to control.
If we'd spent even half that time working on our FTC judging presentation last year we'd
be in much better shape. We learned of some teams at the South Super Regional that spent
much more time practicing their presentations. We have to learn how to set aside time
in the weeks leading up to competition when our focus has been only on the robot.

07 Aug 2015 Mayor's Back to School Fair 2015 and Dallas City of Learning at Fair Park
By Jayesh, Max, Tycho, Omar, Darshan

Task: Share STEM opportunities with returning Dallas ISD Students

On August 7, 2015 we tried to inspire returning DISD students to think of themselves as budding engineers and scientists. At the Mayor's Back to School Fair and as guests of Dallas City of Learning, we demonstrated our creations to Mayor Rawlings and hundreds of kids. Many students learned to operate the robots and learned about robotics opportunities available to them at all levels in Dallas ISD.

Reflections

We were in the historic Women's Building at Fair Park. It's a beautiful building, but foot traffic was not great
since it was separated from the main buildings. The kids who did come through still got a kick out of Kibosh. We had it
slowed down so they could control and play with it directly. Mayor Rawlings was really nice and seemed genuinely
intersested in what we were doing and especially that we were doing so much over the summer. He is really concerned
about summer learning loss and that's part of why he is backing the Dallas City of Learning initiative.
Omar spent a lot
of time touring the building with Argos and even taught Mayor Rawlings how to operate it.
And our story did get featured in the school's first newsletter this year.

Task: Learning more about Git and GitHub.

We've been using GitHub to host this website and to version our robot code since last year. Max, Tycho, Jayesh, Caitlyn, Ethan, Trace, and Alisa attended. Steve Edwards, a member of DPRG, taught us about Git, which is a distributed version control utility that allows there to be a central version of a program while someone may be editing their own local version on their computer. Github is a website that hosts repositories for free.

Reflections

We've been using GitHub for about a year. This website is powered by GitHub pages, and we also have a robot source code repository. But we've mostly been using GitHub for Windows, and today's talk revealed what it was doing for us under the hood. We now have a greater appreciation for GitHub, but it was interesting to see what was happening underneath GitHub for Windows. We clearly still have a lot to learn.

Task: Learn about OpModes

Today, we reviewed opmodes in the FTC API and how to register new opmodes. We also learned about
the differences between regular, linear and synchronous (from SwerveRobotics) opmodes.

Task: Review Blogs/Journal

Our Blog == our Journal. What we also did today was quickly review how to create blog entries so we can do that more frequently this year. We also tried
to catch up on our lengthy backlog of journal articles. We were very busy with outreach this summer and haven't had a chance to write
up most of those events.

Reflections

With the new game being released this coming Saturday, we should soon be able to try and figure out what kind of robot
we'll need to create and how to approach the problem both code-wise and machine-wise.

The linear opmode works as a simple sequence of instructions, while a regular opmode is more event driven but still simplified
kind of the way that arduinos work where some lower level task manager is responsible for calling our main loop
and making sure that communications with the hardware devices happens between those loop calls. Synchronous opmodes
are provided by the SwerveRoboticsLibrary and are similar to the linear opmode, but seem to have some advantages.
There needs to be a lot of work in order for all of us to
really understand all of this code in the new environment before we'll be able to use it well, but in time we'll learn.
I hope.

We were invited by team Technical Dificulties invited Iron Reign to attend first FTC kickoff for our region ever. With the Technical Difficulties coach leading
the discussion, everything relating to the game and coopertition in North Texas was discussed. Technical Difficulties, with some input from us and a few other veteranss, was able to assist the rookie teams with understanding the task of the FTC challenge this year. Questions asked included the challenge, possible loopholes, rules and regulations, and award chances and how to possible obtain them.

Reflections

Iron Reign has always made a priority of assisting the newer teams in FTC and even FLL to understand the competition they are entering and the responsibilities they will undertake in this year and beyond. Many people came up to us asking about build strategies and even basics like understanding javascript. There will be future workshops invloving programming and building that we may attend to learn and spread our own knowledge on the subject matter.

Task:

At the strategy meet we had, I brought up how we need money to get sensors so we can detect our heading and position. At the current moment we spend about 3000 dollars a year on parts and sensors and we only get a 1000 dollar grant to pay for them. We have to compensate the rest with our own cash stash. So this year we are going to seek out donors for our cause. I made a list consisting of some potential people who might have interest putting their name on the side of our bot.

Reflections:

Task: Make a list of tags for blog entries

We've been tagging each blog post as we write them according to topics we think they fall into, but there's been no standard for what to choose from.
For example, what I tag as "Mechanical" Omar tags as "Build." When we get some scripting done on the blog to separate according to topic we will need consistency between everybody.

Reflections

So far these are the tags chosen to represent main topics and types of posts:
@Team members: comment tag suggestions at the bottom of this article or in the group chat

Business - almost ALL outreach is under this tag too. grants won and companies talked too

Outreach - giving to the community, The team went out to an event, taught something, mentored a group etc

Mechanical - physically working on the robot or designs for that (omar's used "build" in the past, similar to that)

Task: Publicize our school and team + showcase the benefits of robotics

Iron Reign was once again invited to attend our school's open house and present our robotics group and speak about what we have and will do. We mainly focsused our topics on the
transition between middle school level robotics and high school level. The topics covered included the overall engineering and computer programmming that we undergo as a part
of FTC. The classes that these possible future students would undertake as a part of SEM such as Physics and Computer Science would function as a baseline in the challenges presented in
FTC and the main focus of our presentation was to hopefully show these possible prospects that what they learn in class would actually be utilized in their everyday life.

Reflections

With the discussions we had with the people in the crowd and leadership of our school, we garnered a lot of attention towards our team and robotics in general. Many people who hadn't
had a lot of personal experience with robotics were mostly attracted to the dynamics of the robots as they moved around and showed of their basic motor functions. Other people who were
engineers and researchers were impressed with our technical level at our age. Many people exclaimed how it's good that we're taing full advantage of our opportunnites as they never had
these opportunites at their age. These open houses let us see how we were before starting FTC seriously, and these opportunities have helped us for our likely futures in the STEM fields.

Task: Get a feel for where we are and the progress of other teams

Whether or not we were allowed to compete, we felt that it would be worthwhile to go to the scrimmage, if only to see how we compared to other teams.
Climbing the mountain is the hardest mechanical design challenge so far, and we were able to see their solutions.

Reflections

Many teams had treads like ours, with different arrangements of idlers, while other teams had completely different solutions. RoBo Bison Team #8811 had a particularly ingenious way of moving up the churros.

Team #8514 used a wheel design that we had discarded early in the design process, with surprising results.
Their front wheels were omni wheels, and their back wheels were ridged for more traction. once they got high enough on the mid-zone, they used their claw arm to reach higher and pull themselves up.
"I specifically asked if they had problems with falling sideways down the mountain, and they did say that they had to be careful to drive up at an angle as close to 90 degrees as they could.

One team had programming trouble, and a few of our members went over to help with their problems. They were using app-inventor, which made it a little hard to and had a well known problem with their wifi-conectThis team ended up taking home a trophy at the competition

Task: Research and understand the various awards

We rarely prepare enough for awards, usually hoping the practice before that we've done enough to be in the running. Last year we won the PTC Creo award at one competition, but that was a one time deal.
This year we can prepare our journal in such a way to make it easier for judges to find what they're looking for when deciding.

Reflections

Out of the 9 awards, 7 are given at every tournament. These main 7 are Inspire, Think, Connect, Innovate, PTC Design, Motivate, and Control.
Following are summaries/key points of the main 7 awards.
Inspire

Good Engineering section, Team section, Business and strategy section

good reliable robot in general

professional

Think

Detailed notebook with drawings

Notebook must recount lessons/journey/experiences of team

Entries giving lessons on underlying math and science concepts

Connect

Notebook business and strategic section. Contains fundraising, sustainability timelines, outreach, and community service goals

actively engaging in the engineering commnuity

Innovate

design process and design solution

elegant and unique design

efficient design

PTC Design

detailed design drawings

functional and aesthetic design

Motivate

Be an ambassador for FIRST

recruit others who might not be active in STEM

EVERY team member must participate

Each member must present

Creatively market the team

Control

Must fill out application sheet

Engineering section

uses intelligent coding

@ Iron Reign members: Pose and color blob would give an advantage

Most of these awards hinge on us being able to effectively present our achievements to judges, with a well organized engineering notebook.
Our tagging system will make it easy to categorize posts based on what award they fall under, I just need to add sorting pages for these 7 new tags.
Then we can print out extra engineering notebooks dedicated to each award. When added, we will go through previous posts and tag based on the relevant award category.
All the more reason to get this done quickly, the posts are piling up.

Task: Making a Business Sponsorship Template

I worked on making a rough draft of a sponsorship template. This template will be used to email companies to ask for their sponsorship.
I have a list of companies that have a high chance of sponsoring us. I found several more to add to the list Evan started last week.
I also added sponsorship levels to increase interest for the companies: Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Steel, Iron. Different levels
through our list imply greater rights and priveleges in accordance to money donated.

Reflections

Our team is hoping to fix up some flaws of the template, so we can start using it to ask companies for their sponsorship.
We are short of money and in the future, we will look for other ways to gain sponsorship money. This will help iron Reign continue
its operations in both competition and extracurricular state. We are quickly growing out of the pure robotics team and growing into an organization.

Task: Analyze how finances effect recognition

It's always a challenge to convince sponsors that we are a worthy team for their grants, visibility in FIRST and the public makes it easier. Teams whose schools have the finances and space to host a tournament are recognized by their peers and even get a boost to Regionals. However, our space is limited, and we wouldn't be able to pull off a quality event if we tried to host. Because of this our opportunities to get noticed by frequent veteran judges are limited, and we step up in outreach to make up for this.

Working with the Mobile Tech XPerience has been a huge amount of fun and a great learning experience, while being extremely visible to say the least. The MXP works to provide equal access to STEM technology to disadvantaged neighborhoods, and we teach modeling and NXT robotics. We get first shot at staffing the vehicle because of how closely we worked with them in the creation. The team was recognized in a CW33 Class Act for our efforts, and this is an incredible help to our sponsorship efforts. We want to tell potential sponsors that Iron Reign is a team that will put everything into getting out and interacting, and we have the evidence to show that.

Oh the places you'll go!

We attend many events throughout the DFW area, taking our robot and whatever else we need along with us. This has often puts a strain in how much we can actually bring with us to FIRST events and STEM events in general. Over this past summer the team helped refurbish an old 90s RV to use as a Mobile Tech XPerience to drive around and help bring STEM to kids. Since the team put in the work to revamp the RV and worked so closely with the nonprofits involved, Big Thought gave us first dibs at using it when it's not out on deployments during the weekends. The MXP gives us a way to transport us and our materials to places that would otherwise seem unlikely. We can also use the MXP in collaboration with DISD to fund trips out of state and other competitions.

With the MXP at our disposal, bringing it to events can not only provide benefits to ourselves but also to other kids and teams. Plus it looks cool.

Task: Create a Budget Sheet for the 2016-2017 Season

As always, Iron Reign needs more money. We are a title 1 school in a cash-strapped district with over 60% of students qualfying for free lunch. So, this year, we decided to *actually* make a spreadsheet to track what we need and how much it'll cost. Coincidentally, our sister team, Imperial Robotics made one too. Also, this year, we're going to share a practice field at our school, SEM. So, we've combined our costs into one spreadsheet for potential sponsors.
We are considering these grants:

Reflections

We really need to start applying for grants - many of them have already started accepting applications or are about to. Considering that our estimated costs for this year are >$2500, these grants are extremely important to us. You can help us today by clicking the donate money up top!

Task: Applying for Grants

As the season begins, we have started to apply for grants. Grants are important to us because 68% of students in our home school receive free-or-reduced lunch, and we are underfunded by the district. It is our responsibility to seek the money required for our team to thrive.
Here is an excerpt from a letter we sent to a local business:

"Unfortunately time is money and the time it takes us to contribute to each of these events costs us dollars we don’t have. We all love teaching young children who are interested in robotics and technology and we hope what they receive is beyond value. But we also need to raise our competitive game and new parts cost money. When jerry rigging and reusing parts unsuited for the job, we waste time that could be used to make more progress and continue the advancement of our robot. As we continuously refine our design, new parts are needed and some need to be replaced as we strive for an efficient and reliable entry. The other piece of the financial puzzle is transportation costs. This year we plan to take part in multiple competitions including out-of-state competitions in order to deepen our competitive potential and improve our chances of advancing to the next level. Competition expenses beyond the standard local track are some of the hardest expenses to fund."

Reflections

In the future, we wish to reach out to more businesses for grant opportunities. We have already applied to the FTC grant and others, and we have set up a Paypal page where anyone can donate any amount of money. For example, you can donate

Task: Plan Bake Sale

During our winter break, we worked on our robot, but we also planned to gain funding for our continued progression. We had applied for multiple grants but we thought crowd souring would be also be beneficial. One way we thought we could accomplish this was through a bake sale at our school. We found out that we are not recognized as a nonprofit by the IRS which means we can't do fundraising through companies like Chipotle. We also have a PayPal, but online funding can also be very tricky. At this point we've planned out who's bringing what to sell. Although our date hasn't been confirmed, we have planned for the 19th or 20th of January.

Reflections

We realize that funding is obviously a major part of running our robotics team. Doing things such as this bake sale throughout the season could help put a dent in our tab.

Particle Collector - close up short shots of collector running from side and from front

Particle Collector - Pulling in a particle - muliple angles (can one of these be done with a dolly shot of moving particle?)

Particle POV - camera on mat - robot strafes into view, engages collector and drives over camera until camera is at accumulator lift

Particle Collector - shot from under the robot sitting on polycarb, camera under the polycarb at the rear of the robot lookup up, seeing a particle pulled in, guided by funnel and loaded into accumulator

Wow, we did it. I mean, we were going for it, but wow - we did it! Out of 118 teams competing in our region, we got 1st Place Inspire (Top Award) at our regional championship! We finally earned the coveted Inspire Banner. We've been building toward this for 7 years! Ever since we started as an FLL team.

Not going to Disney World yet

We are now qualified for the Texas State UIL Robotics Championship and the 12 State South Super Regionals. And we are preparing with the goal of making it to the World Championship.
We have an extended season and while some of us have been to super regionals before, this is the first time the whole team gets to go. Our coffers are empty, we need a whole new round of fundraising to keep up the progress for the extended season. We need your help! Please consider contributing to support our extended season and help us represent North Texas at Supers.

In case you don't know how the game works, it's broken into a 30 second autonomous phase followed by a 2 minute driver controlled period. Two alliances of two robots each compete in each match. Here is our division winning match with alliance mates Technibots. Autonomous:

Task: Design a theme and layout for super regional pits

A year or two ago Imperial advanced to Super Regionals, bringing along a few Iron Reign members. While teams get excited and have a lot of fun at Regionals, it's nothing compared to the displays found at super regionals. We've grown into our cyber-Roman theme this season, and Omar is currently working on a logo to match our new color and feel. Hats won't be enough at this level though, we've got to step it up a notch! Austin and I first looked for a base image, first looking up Roman forts, then moving to campsites. The forts weren't as recognizable, and the tents could be set up much easier. We drew most of our inspiration for the booth theme from the image above, credit to Gaius Hibernicus on Flickr.

Having a recognizable theme is important on two points: scouting and sponsors. Sponsors are more likely to be generous if we can point to a display and show them that people will look at our setup and see their names on it. It's the way to thank them for their generosity in the season. When scouting, you want to be remembered. A forgettable team isn't chosen. Super Regionals usually has teams that have already made alliances over the season, so if you aren't one of those, you've got to stand out in both the game and in the pits.

Reflections

Oddly, this competition has a pit size of 9'x9', not the usual 10'x10', so we will be designing to that measurement, and hopefully expanding it later. Austin designed a base frame structure in SketchUp and I started making models of our carts, banners, and tables to be arranged after. We need enough sign space to display our Inspire banner, sponsors, school banner, and team aquila. The robot cart needs a clear path to the workspace area, and we need space up front for pins, a display with our outreach and robot reveal running, and a trophy display. I've made models for these because we already have them, and have begun the shuffling and brainstorming.

Austin created a Roman style shield in a record time, using old field mats as the core and sawed off broom handles (left over from the hats) to keep them stiff. We ran out of daylight to scrub them clean of dirt, but did that this practice. When we were sure the tape would adhere he covered the front in red duct tape with a gold border. He also mounted an IKEA bowl to the front as decoration, and is planning to round the corners off so he can mount a LED strip along the edge. It already looks really impressive, and we have more materials to make a second if we keep the pace up.

The structural design of the tent was adjusted for simplicity's sake; we're making a cube as large as the competition allows, and hanging tan fabric/ripstop nylon along the different sides to create the tent shape. The PVC supports are going to be wrapped in a worn/tea-stained look material to keep it unified. Our two smaller rolling carts will have our front displays, and since they have shelving, they can serve as storage for the boxes that don't need to get pulled out as often during the competition. We can mount a shield to the front if we want to cover them up. The Inspire banner is bright enough that it can likely be seen easily from the back or side of the tent, the school banner will go across the top above everything, and the aquila will likely go in the front on the left, beside the displays.

Particle Collector - shot from under the robot sitting on polycarb, camera under the polycarb at the rear of the robot lookup up, seeing a particle pulled in, guided by funnel and loaded into accumulator

Task: Detail our AmeriCorps partnership

Together with BigThought, we were able to find another programmatic sponsor: the US Government. For those of y'all who don't know, AmeriCorps is a federally run program that encourages civil service. Most 501(c)(3)s are able to apply to be AmeriCorps partners, and BigThought was one of them. Because of this, over the summer, we were able to gain volunteers directly sponsored by the American government, two alumni (Jayesh and Lin) included. This was an amazing experience for Iron Reign, as we have now had partners of all types, from public to private, from local to federal. As well, this has further increased the visibilty of the MXP, having it recognized on the federal level.

FIRST in Texas and the TWC grant

In Texas, a government labor agency called the Texas Workforce Commission gives a yearly grant to people who apply through FIRST in Texas. We got it last year and stopped by their headquarters to say thanks while in Austin. This year, we got it again. The grant can go towards any robot/tournament related expense. This $550 will cover our first tournament and a few REV parts.

FIRST in Texas also supports tournament fees for teams that advance beyond the Regional level. Thanks to them our tournament fees for the Super Regional Trip and the Worlds trip are covered, saving us $1,500. We'd like to give a huge thanks to the TWC and FIRST in Texas!

DISD's sponsorship of Iron Reign

As referenced in another blog post, we recently went to a DISD Coaches' meeting. Shortly after the meeting, we were confirmed to be the host of the DISD Townview Qualifier. So, DISD was able to send us a free full-size field to build and use until the qualifier. As well, since we are one of the first teams within DISD to use the REV system, we were also sent $2600+ of REV parts in order to demonstrate REV parts to other DISD teams and teach them how to use them. This was the fruit of our prior efforts to get noticed by DISD. Since we went as a team to the DISD meeting, we were able to differentiate ourselves, our team, and our work ethic from other area teams so that we could recieve a larger grant.

Reflections

This was an amazing oppurtunity for Iron Reign. Not only did this reduce our costs for running the team this year, it also allowed us to host a tournament. It covered most of our part expenses for the next year except for new batteries and some tournament fees.

Task: Run and compete at the DISD Scrimmage

Today we helped run and participated in a scrimmage at the Davis Ellis Field House. Iron Reign will be hosting a qualifier in December at Townview, our home school. This scrimmage served as a practice for the preparation and execution of an FTC event. We were able to learn the best way to assemble the field, run the scoring and game software, and properly announce rounds and other information teams may need. As we should, we set up an inspection table where members of our team used the FTC approved inspection checklist to properly assess the robots of other teams along with our own robot. This is a skill that we will need to use when performing inspections during our qualifier. Additionally, we had to figure the software required to run the audio behind matches and fill in the scoring data, and having done this now will save us a lot of time during the qualifier that we are going to host.

We also learned how important it is to create an itinerary for your team and try to keep everyone moving at the needed pace. During this scrimmage we were only able to complete 8 out of 12 matches due to this being some teams first match ever and some issues with teams not arriving, or not having been registered beforehand. But this provided us with a great experience and lots of information, we will take all of the things we learned after helping run this scrimmage and apply it to the qualifier we are hosting in December.

This scrimmage was our second of the season, and while part of the team was focused on announcing, scoring, and field setup, the others worked on improving the robot and pinpointing key issues to solve before our first qualifier this Saturday the 11th at Greenhill. Also, the drive team got the necessary practice for skills that they need for upcoming competitions, like setting up WiFi direct connections between our phones and recognizing when batteries had low or sufficient voltages, skills that don’t seem very difficult but are very important for those working hands-on the robot during competitions. Also, with the removal of the “wiggle test” this year, we have to adapt and become very prepared before each match so that we can make the smooth transition that is required from autonomous period to tele-op. Although we have spent a lot of time doing drive practice on the field that we were gifted, driving under pressure in a competitive environment with other teams in our district is when we are able to decipher the most prominent problems with our robot. An example of this is our autonomous program: running it seems like second nature when we are practicing alone, but when we are with other teams there are more factors to consider, like whether our autonomous program is compatible with theirs, etc. Scrimmages are a perfect opportunity to figure out what issues we have and how to solve them, and this time we were also able to get the practice we so needed running an FTC qualifier.

08 Nov 2017 BigThought and Dallas City of Learning Sponsorship
By Ethan

Task: Recount our sponsorship with BigThought

We have two kinds of sponsorships, money-based and programmatic. Our partnership with BigThought is the latter. For those who don't live in the greater Dallas area, BigThought is a local nonprofit that strives to provide STEM and Arts education to children so that the oppurtunity gap can be closed. As you probably know by now, *last* season we converted an RV into a Mobile Learning Lab. This year had been about substaining it and keeping it running.

To fund our Lab and get contract it to local events, we partnered with BigThought and created a program to serve underserved communities to spark an interest in STEM. They provide extra volunteers when our team isn't enough, as well as the logistics for registering to work at events. Through them, other companies also give grants to our RV. For example, Best Buy heard about our initiative and funded the technology for our RV: 4 3D printers, 30 laptops, and 10 EV3s. All of these helps our mission to assist underserved communities.

Iron Reign has existed, in one form or another, for the past
eight years. We have competed in FLL, Google Lunar X Prize Challenge, and now,
FTC.

While our team originated at WB Travis Vanguard and Academy,
we are now hosted by the School of Science and Engineering at Townview, in
DISD. Despite our school being 66% economically disadvantaged and being Title
1, our school consistently ranks in the top 10 nationwide. As well, our school
has numerous other award winning extracurricular, including CX Debate,
Math/Science UIL, and more.

A History of Iron Reign

Iron Reign has been a team for eight years. We initially
started as an FLL team, plateauing in regionals every year we competed. We also
did Google’s Lunar X Prize program every Summer,
achieving finalist status in 2011 and 2012. Upon moving to high school, we
started doing FTC, as FRC was too cost-prohibitive to be parent-run.

We have been an FTC team for 6 years, advancing further and
further each year. Last year, we got to the South Super Regionals, qualifying
by winning the North Texas Inspire Award. In Georgia, we were the first alternative for Worlds if another team dropped out due
to cost.

Also in FTC, we compete in the Texas UIL State
Championships. For those unfamiliar with UIL, it is the main organizational
committee for all public school academic and athletic events. Through UIL, we
helped compete in the first test program for the UIL Robotics program and since
then have competed in every subsequent tournament.

Outreach

Iron Reign spends a large amount of time on outreach. This
year alone, we have put in 500 man-hours and created 2800 individual
connections to people in our community. Our goal of this outreach is to reach
disadvantaged children who would not normally have the opportunity to participate
in STEM programs in order to spark their interest in STEM for future learning.
Some of our major outreach events include presenting at the National Science
Teachers’ Association Convention in Florida, hoping to inspire people in other
regions to adopt our methods of outreach. We volunteered at a Microsoft youth
convention to spread STEM awareness, as well as volunteering throughout our
school district.

We also volunteer for FIRST. We have hosted a scrimmage for
our entire school district, DISD (one of the largest school districts in the
country), and are hosting a qualifier for the North Texas region in December.
We also instruct parents and educators on how to start a FIRST team when
volunteering, as Iron Reign itself was started by parents at WB Travis.

Our outreach stands out from other teams through our mode of
presentation. Last year, we renovated a 90’s Seaview Skyline RV, took out the
“home” components, and turned it into a mobile tech lab to read underprivileged
demographics within our community. Our RV currently holds 4 3D Printers, 30+
computers, 3 widescreen TVs, and 1 microwave. Our current curriculum consists
of teaching kids 3D modelling in the back of the RV, using Google Sketchup, as
it is free and available to any family with a computer. We usually help them
design keychains, as they are memorable, but don’t take excessive time to print
on our printers. In the front, we teach kids how to use EV3 robots and teach
them how to use the EV3 programming language to compete in a sumo-bot competition.
We also give advice to parents and educators on how to start FIRST teams. To
fill and staff the RV, we have received grants from Best Buy to purchase the 3D
printers and laptops, grants from non-profits such as BigThought and Dallas
City of Learning to fund the building and upkeep of the RV, and staffing from
BigThought and AmeriCorps, as well as our own team. The AmeriCorps staffing is
especially notable, as it is a US Federal Government program to support civil
service within communities.

When not in outreach service, we can transform our RV into
tournament mode. We have taken numerous long-distance road trips aboard our RV,
with locations such as Austin, Arkansas, and Florida. We substitute the laptops
for bandsaws and drill presses, use the flat screens
to program, and bring our higher-quality personal 3D printer. At tournaments,
we encourage other teams to board our RV, not only to encourage them to start
their own similar programs, but also to help them with mechanical and building
issues.

Business and Funding

Normally, Iron Reign does not get major funding. However,
this year, we have seen our funding, sponsorships, and grants increase
exponentially. Currently, those include:

·BigThought - RV materials, staffing, and upkeep

·Dallas City of Learning (DCOL) – RV materials
and upkeep

·Best Buy – 4x3D Printers, Laptops for RV

·AmeriCorps – RV staffing

·DISD STEM - $3000 of REV parts and 2 full
practice fields

·Dallas Makerspace – Access to machining tools

·DPRG – Robot assistance

·FIRST – Tournament fees

·Texas Workforce Commission – Grant

We are always seeking out new sources of funding.In the past, we have applied for prior grants
by sending letters to STEM-curious companies in the Dallas area. For example,
we have previously applied for a $4000 Orix grant, a STEM foundation dedicated
to spreading STEM to the underserved. Also, recently, we received an additional
grant from Best Buy for our distinguished service to the underprivileged within
the Dallas area.

In previous years, we have lacked the ability to get
significant transportation fondant to tournaments. However, through our
partnership with DISD, we have solved that problem. And when DISD is unable to
provide transportation due to short notice, we can provide our own
transportation due to our building of the RV.

Reference Business Letter from Last Season

“Dear Orix,

Iron Reign Robotics, a
robotics team of 7 years, is competing in the 2016/17 First Tech Challenge
Velocity Vortex game. We are based out of the School of Science and Engineering
(SEM) in Dallas which is a title one school.

The population of the
public school is racially diverse and 68 percent of the students are on
free-or-reduced lunch. In spite of our economic challenges, SEM is regularly
considered the school that offers students the most growth in the entire
district (highest effectiveness index) and is regularly in the top 10 in many
national rankings. But as the second robotics team to be formed at this Dallas
ISD Magnet, we are underfunded by the district and need to reach out to
organizations that are investing in the long-term future of our community.

Each year we deepen
our advanced robotics skills, improve our ability to organize around common
team goals, and learn how to better communicate with technical professionals so
that we will prepared make an impact as we continue through college and
eventually join the workforce. Last year our team made it to the Regional
Championship during the FTC season and then proceeded on to the UIL State
Robotics Championship in Austin during the summer. This year, with your
support, we are striving to make it to the 12-state super regional in Georgia
and go from there to the World-wide competition in Houston.

Yet we spend a
significant amount of our efforts investing in younger students outside the
team. We work very hard to let young students in North Texas know about the
opportunities in STEM education. We mentor students in elementary and middle
schools. We regularly participate in a series of STEM outreach events to help
younger students think of themselves as future scientists, engineers and
technical professionals. This includes presenting at events like the Dallas
Mayor’s Back to School Fair, Earth Day Texas, and Moon day at the Frontiers of
Flight Museum just to name a few. Last year (2015/16) our outreach involvement
amounted to 400 team person-hours in service to 2,200 people. We are unaware of
any other FTC team in our region that does as much outreach as we do.

This year we’ve
stepped those numbers up to over 500 person-hours serving over 2,000 people so
far just this summer. This was because we took on a project to renovate an RV
to create a mobile learning laboratory for the Dallas City of Learning. Not
only did we turn the interior into a mobile technical classroom with 3D printers,
but many team members volunteered to teach robotics and 3D modelling and
printing on board while volunteering for AmeriCorps with Big Thought this
summer. The team was featured as a “Class Act” on TV channel CW33 because of
this effort.

Unfortunately, time is
money and the time it takes us to contribute to each of these events costs us
dollars we don’t have. We all love teaching young children who are interested
in robotics and technology and we hope what they receive is beyond value. But
we also need to raise our competitive game and new parts cost money. When jerry
rigging and reusing parts unsuited for the job, we waste time that could be
used to make more progress and continue the advancement of our robot. As we
continuously refine our design, new parts are needed and some need to be
replaced as we strive for an efficient and reliable entry. The other piece of
the financial puzzle is transportation costs. This year we plan to take part in
multiple competitions including out-of-state competitions in order to deepen
our competitive potential and improve our chances of advancing to the next
level. Competition expenses beyond the standard local track are some of the
hardest expenses to fund.

We are asking for
$4,000 to help us continue our journey into robotics and we hope that Orix can
become a major supporter of our team while we continue to invest in the futures
of many more students in North Texas. We would love a chance to visit with you,
show you our robot in its current form, and discover together how much our
mission and your focus areas have in common. Please let us know how to schedule
that time. Until then, you can access much more information about Iron Reign on
our team blog: http://www.ironreignrobotics.com/

Warmest
Regards,

Iron
Reign“

Looking Back, Moving Forward

In the past, sustainability has not been a major concern of
Iron Reign’s. We’ve essentially had the same team for seven years. This year,
our eighth, we’ve finally lost members through graduation. As a result, we’ve
had to substantially reconsider our approach to recruitment and how to manage
our changing team.

We already have another team in our school, team 3734
Imperial Robotics. 3734 is an entirely
different team, with different sponsors, members, robots, journal, outreach,
and codebase. That being said, we recruit the more accomplished members of
that team. The teams’ relationship is most similar to the difference between a
Junior Varsity team and a Varsity team.

We tend to recruit based on robotics experience, but having
robotics experience alone is not a guarantee of joining our team. Iron Reign
has a specific culture, and we tend to recruit people whose personalities fit
our culture. We also do not accept people who only want to join robotics as a
resume booster. While robotics is indeed a resume booster, and we allow every
member to claim co-captain on their college applications, members of Iron Reign
ought to join out of their genuine passion for robotics, not because of it
getting them ahead in the rat race of college applications.

Since this year was the first year in which we lost a
substantial number of our teammates, we had to learn how to effectively
transfer knowledge. First, we were losing our master of 3D modelling, Max, so
we had two members, Abhi and Charlotte, learn under his wing throughout last
season. Because of that effort, they have now designed a variety of parts on
our robot. For the blog and engineering journal, Ethan learned under Lin’s
tutelage how to use Jekyll, Shopify, and manage the blog. This year, we face
difficulties, as we will lose our lead programmer, Tycho, for next season. To
combat that, our members Abhi and Janavi, are learning the intricacies of our codebase that we’ve kept since we first started using
Java.

Game Strategy

This year, we were faced with a conundrum. The central
question was this – “Should we focus on scoring the cryptoboxes, relic, or
jewel?”. We settled on the order of Cryptobox >
Relic > Jewel.

Our game strategy was based off of the fact that we could
build a robot which could score one block initially, and easily score a column,
giving us 40+ points right off the bat. As well, the cryptobox process is
simplistic enough that we could get to the balance stone to gain even more
points in the endgame, without doing any point-risky challenges such as the
Relic.

When we finish the cryptobox designs and autonomous, our
next goal is the Jewel. The Jewel challenge is simplistic enough that it could
be done in 1-2 meetings without interfering with any other design processes.
Our current planned design process is first to create an arm with a color
sensor attached like most teams, but eventually we plan to remove that color
sensor and identify the Jewel only by OpenCV.

Finally, our last area of focus is scoring the Relic. Scoring
the Relic involves a high degree of difficulty, and the risk grows when you
consider that you have to score the Relic upright in order to gain the most
points. As well, building an arm that can score the Relic while still staying
within the 18x18x18 size limits increases the design difficulty of the robot.

Building

This year, Iron Reign has drastically changed how it builds
its parts. In previous years, we have relied on primary Tetrix parts, utilizing
AndyMark parts for the drivetrain and other moving areas. However, we happened
to gain access to a motherlode of REV parts, which drastically changes our
designs from previous years.

The biggest change enabling innovation is our newfound use
of REV rails within our robot. REV rails allow for basically unlimited mount
points for parts so that we are afforded maximum flexibility in our designs,
comparable to the flexibility of 3D printing.

As well, for this year’s robot chassis, we have decided to
take the use of REV parts even further, and use the REV Power Distribution
Module and both Expansion Hubs. The reason for this change is twofold. First,
we experienced significant connection and static issues last year with our
robot, partially due to excess static buildup from our mecanum wheels. So far,
we have not experienced any of those issues using REV modules, even though we
are using the same base chassis. Second, the REV hubs allow us to add more
features on to our robot, such as LED strips and extra servos,
that allow us to signal our team as well as create more innovative
components of our robot.

We also utilize a variety of 3D printed parts on our robot.
While we use less 3D printed parts than previous years, that
is due to the particular challenges of this year. Our parts are modelled in PTC
Creo, and we have recently switched over from Creo V.3 to Creo V.4 so that we
can use the more advanced features included in the new program. Our personal 3D
printer can handle a variety of materials, and we have used nylon, ABS,
Filoflex, and Ninjaflex in prior designs to fit various needs. In our current robot,
we have settled on using nylon. Nylon has four qualities that make it more
advantageous than other materials. First, nylon is less brittle and prone to
breaking than materials such as ABS. Second, nylon achieves comparatively high
print quality on our robot as compared to Filoflex and Ninjaflex. Third, nylon
has enough give so that it doesn’t break, but is strong enough to withstand the
forces felt in everyday use of our robot. Finally, nylon can be dyed so that we
can give our parts a distinguishing color, a quality that we have taken
advantage of in prior seasons.

An example of these 3D printed parts are our wheel guards.
In testing, our mecanum drive train tended to cut up the cryptoboxes when we
drove up against them. As a result, we designed various wheel guards and tested
them. We also made mockups with various materials such as cardboard, to
minimize design time and waste parts. We settled on a U-shaped design to
prevent damage to the boxes and other field elements, while not sacrificing
mobility. Then, to guarantee nothing went wrong, we iterated through various
heights of the U-shape so that they would not cut into the mats or bump into
other robots

Programming

Iron Reign has generated a substantial codebase over the
years. Initially, Iron Reign programmed in RobotC. However, when robot phones
started becoming the main form of control, we transferred our
codebase into Java. We use the Android Studio IDE to code our robot.

Our most notable programming achievement has been the
integration of machine vision and augmented reality libraries into our code.
Currently, we use Vuforia in conjunction with OpenCV to identify and score
field elements in autonomous, as well as assist in scoring elements during
TeleOp. Both Vuforia and OpenCV are industrial-level technologies that we have
integrated into our codebase. Vuforia in particular is
currently owned by PTC, one of the sponsors of FIRST.

Another notable programming achievement is our Pose class.
We use the class to determine our robot’s current position on the field using
trigonometric functions. While this class currently need updating for the new
season, it can still be used for any small-scale operations on the field.

Design Process

Iron Reign uses two design processes in conjunction with
each other to create efficient and reliable parts. First, we use the Kaizen
design process, also used in industrial corporations such as Toyota. The
philosophy behind Kaizen is the idea of continual improvement, that there is
always some modification to each system on our robot that will make it more
efficient or more reliable. As well, design competitions are a focal point of
Iron Reign’s design process. In these design competitions, team members choose
their favored designs that all complete some field challenge, and build them
individually. Upon completion of each mechanism, the designs are tested against
each other, considering weight, maneuverability, reliability, and efficiency.

An example of these design processes working in conjunction
is the process of designing our cryptobox intake system. Evan had the idea to
build an arm-style grabber seen on many current competition robots. His design,
however, included shorter arms for space’s sake and a more compact lift system
than normal. Austin decided to build a unique conveyor-belt system which used
friction to hold blocks in space and move them vertically. Through the
competition, we determined that Evan’s design was more efficient and took up
less space than Austin, so we settle on his design, adding in a linear slide for
lifting at the end of the process. Then, Kaizen comes in. Through firsthand
experience in scrimmages, we learned that the grabber system isn’t as reliable
as we thought when first testing. So, we have designed a new grabber system
that moves like the arms did previously, but also rotate with soft spikes
attached to hold blocks with friction better without damaging them.

Task: Attend a Best Buy event and accpet an award

We have been using our Mobile Learning Lab for about a year now. Initally, we were given a grant by Best Buy to get electronics and printers for the RV. Today, we attended a Best Buy event to recognize our outstanding service, and recieved a further $10,000 grant. On top of that, we signed a contract to expand our efforts to a year round program, signing onto 50+ events a year. Through this, we have finally achieved our goal - making the RV substainable, even without Iron Reign.

Task: Update the Business/Strategic Plan

Cumulative Updates to 12/31/2017

MXP

Update (10 November 2017):
The Mobile Tech Experience program described above received a grant from Best Buy for its outstanding performance, and to fund more outreach events and upkeep of the MXP. The company that schedules MXP deployments, BigThought, also signed onto a year-round deployment schedule for the MXP.

General Fixes

Task: Talk to REV about our REVolution System

On an excursion to the Rev Headquarters located conveniently in North Dallas, to pick up a few extra servos and other miscellaneous parts we decided to bring a couple of our 3D printed REVolution parts to show to the founder of Rev. if you aren’t familiar with our REVolution system, essentially what it is, is a way to turn Rev extrusion rails into axels to be used for more robust and modular axels. These new printable parts can be seen in their corresponding blog post and can be found on Thingiverse along with instructions.

After waiting for Rev’s founder to see us, we had the chance to demonstrate the new parts we had come up with. The REVolution system peaked his interest and he would like to follow up at some point to possibly work on making the parts and selling them as part of the Rev product line. While you won’t be able to find our parts anytime soon, you can look for them in the future since Rev is currently working on a few other priorities.

Part 2

We want to have further talks with REV about mass-producing these parts, as we believe that these could benefit teams everywhere and allow their designs to be more flexible. As well, we plan to further develop our REVolution system so that it has greater functionality.

Task: Prepare for DISD STEM Expo

Next Saturday, Iron Reign will be participating in the DISD STEM Expo for our second year. As we did last year, we are bringing our Mobile Learning Experience to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and will serve children in our community to spark an interest in STEM fields and learning. Dallas City of Learning, the non-profit that schedules the Mobile Learning Experience, runs a featured exhibit in the expo, so we expect lots of traffic to our vehicle. Additionally, we have partnered with Best Buy, who is providing 12 volunteers including store employees and geek squad members to work with us on the vehicle. This will be immensely helpful as these extra sets of hands will allow for more kids to be served.

For our presentation, we are going to have the usual two components, sumo robots and 3D printed keychains. We will teach the kids how to program our pre-built Lego sumo robots in Lego Mindstorms, the same program used in FLL. This is usually our best opportunity to promote First and tell families of kids who enjoyed working with the robots how they can start a team or join an existing one. Also, on our vehicle we have four functional 3D printers and plenty of laptops with Google SketchUp pre-installed, and with these we teach kids how to design and print their very own keychain with their names on it or anything else they would like. Because of our extra volunteers and the size of the event, we expect to have lots of kids coming through our vehicle and participating in these activities.

Advanced Waterjet Cutting

Today we visited the Advanced Waterjet Cutting office and spoke to Sal Copado and Chris regarding our side shield designs. We had called a couple days in advance to set up this meeting, and we brought both our robot and our Mobile Learning Lab to demo. They were impressed by our work and were happy to support a local team competing at the Supers level. Sal agreed to cut out the side shields for our robot, though because of their heavy work backlog, they said that the side shields would not be complete until next Wednesday. While this is before Supers, we decided to go to the Dallas Makerspace to laser cut the design out of high density fiberboard so that we can start assembly based on the new design during our Saturday meeting and the following evenings. These cut-outs are pictured below.

After the demo of our robot, we discussed the design of the side shields. At first they assumed that we needed assistance in putting together the design, but we had already prepared a design and had it ready for the meeting. After having a look at it, they identified a mistake that we had made. We are used to designing files for manufacturing - mostly on our 3D printer. We typically include machine adjustments into our designs so we can upload them right to the machines. For example we adjust our designs to compensate for 1st layer spreading or for material expansion into small holes. In designing our side shields for waterjet machines, we figured out the kerf we needed to work with and made adjustments accordingly. They saw this and said that there was no need for these adjustments, as they recommend that they make those adjustments themselves due to the variance in kerf for the different machines they use. They can cut industrial sized parts with either their waterjet or their laser for finer tolerances. We told them we wanted them cut out of 1/8" thick 6061-T6 aluminum and they confirmed that this was a good choice. The final files we sent them include designs for our side shields, mounting plates for our new 6in Mechanum wheels, and internal wheel mounts. We're basically covering the cost of the material and they are covering all other expenses.

Next Steps

We hope to pick up the new parts next Wednesday and get them on the robot that evening. We would also like to return with the full team to AWC and get a tour of their manufacturing facilities and machine shop. But we'll need to look for a student holiday to get that done since we're always at school during their opening hours. We'd also like to show them the updated robot and see if they have any ideas for further improvements.

Task:

So, its Supers time again! And that means its time to design our tents and pick a theme for ourselves. Last year, when Iron Reign went to Supers for the first time, we got to see all of the other teams' displays; before, we had only been to regional level competitions and weren't ready for the displays at Supers. We saw the coolest tents and got some really cool trinkets. For example, one team from Louisiana passed out miniature Tabasco bottles and another team laser cut wood into the FTC logo.

We need to make sure that our tent has a good design and we have memorable trinkets to pass out, if we have a recognizable team it will help us with scouting and sponsors. If we can show sponsors that their name will be on our display then they are more likely to either continue supporting our team or think about starting. And for scouting we are more likely to get chosen for an alliance if we have a memorable robot performance and pit.

This is what our tent looked like last year at Supers, we plan to take this design and improve upon it based on the feedback we received.

Next Steps:

So, I decided to create a 3D model of what our tent might look like, taking measurements of the carts, banners, and tables, so that we can make sure that we not only have space for all of the items we intend to place in our pit, (Inspire banner, sponsors, school banner,team aquila, carts, banners, tables, etc.) but we also need enough space to move around in our area. I used SketchUp to create the model, photos are below.

Last year, Austin created a Roman-style shield with old field mats as the plating and sawed off broom handles (left over from the hats) to keep them stiff. We plan to use those again this year keeping with our Roman theme. We also plan to add to this by hopefully creating another (hopefully lighter) shield to carry around; this way we will be recognizable for both our helmets and shields.

Trinkets:

Kenna and I worked together last Saturday to create business cards and design wooden coins that we would
laser cut out of wood. We decided that we really needed to advertise about 4 main things:

Our team logo with our name and team number

Our game stats

Info about the MXP

Social Media accounts and our website

So, after thinking about all of this and looking at other teams' cards and trinkets, we came up with this design for the business cards. For the wooden coins, we put our logo on one side and for the other we put our social media info.

Update:

Getting everything printed out was quite a hassle. First we sent the cards to get printed out three days before we left, already cutting it close and then due to some error the order was cancelled. Then, after getting the error sorted out, we got 1,000 bushiness cards printed out in 24 hours.

Then for the laser cutting of the coins, we realized that it would take around 8 hours to complete and since we don't have access to a laser cutter at school, one of us would have to go to the nearby maker space and wait 8 hours for it to finsh. Since it was right before the completion, and we needed to spend our time focusing on the robot, so we decided to 3-D print the coins and pass them out. This worked wonderfully and since we brought along the R.V. any time we ran low we could print out more on board.

Other teams loved our merch and we got to see some other great trinkets, one team from Louisiana gave out miniature Tabasco bottles, and another gave us a laser cut horseshoe game for luck!

Task: Get Funding from Mark Cuban

At the World Championship this year, Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, talked about getting celebrity involvement in the robotics program. Very few celebrities support FIRST (will.i.am being the biggest) and will.i.am. sent a request through Kamen to all teams to reach out to closeby celebrities to get them involved in FIRST. As I sat in the crowd at Minute Maid Park, Kamen's words stuck with me on my journey home. I thought about how cool it would be to have celebrities support Iron Reign. However, I had no idea who to contact.

Still on the quest, I sat down to watch TV one day. As I scrolled through the channels, I found Shark Tank (one of my favorite shows). Then it hit me: I wanted Mark Cuban, a Dallas native, to support Iron Reign.

Mark Cuban, investor on Shark Tank and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has been very important to Dallas. I decided to reach out to him to see if he would be willing to support us. I asked people at school if anyone knew Cuban or knew people who knew him. Luckily, my friend's father went to the same gym as him! Through my friend (Amanda), I reached out to Cuban. I drafted an email which would be sent through Amanda to Cuban.

Next Steps:

Task: Reply to Cuban

After sending a small email to Cuban, he replied very soon asking for more details(shown above)! With this, I felt more confident I could make things happen. In my following email, I provided more details explaining the FTC program, from last years challenge (Relic Recovery) to the work we have done for Dallas. I also asked to present to Cuban about the team since Iron Reign tends to get information across best through presentations.

Next Steps:

Task: Explain Iron Reign

Once again, we got a positive response from Cuban! Unfortunately, we couldn't meet in person but I was still pursuing the sponsor path. For the next message, I decided to get some other members of the team on the project. Since this was our one shot to convince him, I drafted a much longer sponsor email, inspired by older emails to our sponsors. In this email, we provided specifics into what we can do with Cuban's support. With a monetary donation, we will either spend money on robot parts or save it to act as a seed donation for kick-starting a non-profit organization for Iron Reign. Since we are somewhat limited in our monetary abilities due to DISD "red tape", we wanted to develop this organization to better fund our team for years to come. Explaining all these details, our email came to a close. However, I still wanted for Cuban to "meet" the members of the team. From this stance, I decided that making a video from our team members would do the job. After some quick script writing, we developed the video shown below!

Next Steps:

In this post, I would like to thank Mr. Cuban for supporting Iron Reign. Today, we received a message from Mark Cuban's assistant stating that he would be contributing $2500 to Iron Reign. There is no end to how much this helps our team for the following season.

FIRST is an organization dedicated to promoting young minds in STEM. However, to participate in the program (specifically the Tech Challenge), many materials are needed. A successful team often needs funding to sustain itself for years to come. Mr. Cuban has allowed Iron Reign to actualize this through his support. With his help, we hope to continue to influence young children through our outreach and build better robots. Hopefully, we can return to the World Championship and bring Mr. Cuban to the greatness of FIRST.

Austin and I are interns at Abbott Laboritories' Dallas Site. This summer, we joined all other Abbott High School Interns for intern week. We toured sites all around the country, including Texas, Ohio, and Illinois, meeting other employees and learning what they do at that specific site. I discussed robotics with board members at AMIE (Advancing Minorities in Engineering) and the career implications of beginning in high school. Austin presented the MXP to a room full of interns, engineers, recruiters, analysts, and specialists. Our chaperones were kind enough to spend the week talking to us about their experiences as part of Abbott and the goal of the internship: keeping students interested and involved in STEM.
Even though Intern Week is over, we're both enthusiastic to return to our summer projects. Thus far, the summer has been a wonderfully STEM-filled experience.

Next Steps

As Austin and I continue our internship at Abbott, we're excited to keep getting hands-on engineering experience and learn more about getting a mentor from Abbott. I will be learning and using CAD to optimize a manufacturing process and will be using that experience in our design division in 6832.

Task: Refurbish an Apple II CNC Mill and Lathe Set

We were helping our school's FRC team clean out their parts closet, which hadn't been cleaned in 10-ish years. Under the layers and layers of FRC junk, we found an Apple II-operated Patterson/Paxton CNC Milling Set. These were meant to run off of a long-since-gone Apple II in a classroom setting. But, it had long been auctioned off, leaving the set useless. But, Iron Reign, as a collective of hoarders, decided to bring these machines over to the house to refurbish.

The first idea we looked at was emulating the Apple II with an Arduino, as seen here. However, this implementation didn't have the response rate needed for an accurate CNC machine, so we scrapped it. Then, we found this post. The problem that people mainly encounter is that, for some strange reason, Paxton\Patterson used a proprietary parallel port pinout, and deviating from that pinout (read: using a standard parallel cord) would fry the optidriver board in the machine. So, we bought a ethernet-to-parallel port jumper box (UC300eth).

We then sliced a parallel cable in half, and rewired the wires to the pins, treating the left column of that of the port numbers on the board and the right as the pin numbers of the cables.

We then made a power supply for the UC300eth. We attempted to use a 10V DC power supply, and use a voltage splitter. Unfortunately, the power spiked, and probably fried the UC300.

Next Steps

We need to buy a new UC300 board and hook it up to a laptop with Mach3 to test the power.

Task: Recieve a grant from Best Buy for continued MXP operation

Last year, we recieved a $10,000 award to continue our RV operations, cover staffing costs, and pay for additional technology\repairs. This year, we received another grant of $10,000 for the same reason. This is another stepping stone in keeping Iron Reign and BigThought's MXP program substainable for another year. In addition, any donation amount encourages more donations in a kind-of snowball effect.

Next Steps

We will continue to seek out grants for not only the MXP, but also so that our team can remain substainable for years to come.

Task: Detail the grant awards that Iron Reign and its associated teams recieved

So, Iron Reign is currently training an influx of new members - so much that we've started two new teams: Iron Star Robotics and Iron Core. Of course, with this programmatic growth comes plenty of growing pains. A major part of that is finding funding for new teams. In that regard, Iron Reign applied for grants for itself as well as for its other 3 feeder teams. Namely, we applied for the TWC grant(s) and the FIRST in Texas Rookie Grant (sponsored by DEKA) for the new teams.

Today we reaped our results: we recieved $525 in funding for Iron Reign and Imperial and $1,525 for Iron Star and Iron Core from the Texas Workforce Commission, as well as $1,000 for Iron Star and Iron Core from DEKA. In addition, we've currently recieved $4,000 from the DISD STEM Department and $2,500 from Mark Cuban, for a cumulative total of $11,400 raised this season.

Next Steps

Even though this is a hefty amount of money - one of the largest hauls made by Iron Reign - it still isn't satisfactory. We now have two more teams, increasing Iron Reign's expenses and stretching simple resources such as 8mm M3s thin. So, we will always be seeking more funding.

Task: Update the engineering journal on changes to our MXP program

First, for a brief backstory: Iron Reign built the MXP - or Mobile Learning Lab - two seasons ago so that we could do outreach to underserved areas within our community. To do this, we partnered with BigThought, who recieved grants for laptops and technology aboard the vehicle. We spent that entire summer rennovating an old 90's RV so that it could become the Mobile Learning Lab. Then, last season, we presented at the National Science Teachers' Association in Kississimee, Florida, where we talked to educators in five other cities to start their own similar programs.

Now, let's return to the present season. As of today, BigThought is recieving $150k in funding to create a second Mobile Learning Lab. This funding is all-inclusive: the RV and technology aboard. As far as we know, this is the single largest fundraising haul any FTC team has ever recieved. Now, let me be clear, this is not funding to team costs such as registration and parts, but rather a larger-scale programmatic fund to continue and increase Iron Reign's outreach frequency. Luckily for us, we've secured a lot of funding this season already through Mark Cuban, individual donors, and FIRST in Texas grants.

Now, here comes the less-so-good news. Even though $150k is a monumental sum of money, it still falls short of the cost of a new MXP, by about $100k. However, the guarantee of over half of the necessary funding makes it much more likely that the additional funds will be secured to purchase the brand-new vehicle.

Next Steps

So the next steps are obviously to work with BigThought to find the additional $100k, but this is still huge - we may have broken a fundraising record. And besides that, this is what Iron Reign has always worked for: the platonic ideal of outreach. We have the ability to expand our program, make it more comprehensive, and make it substainable on it's own merit. This is a great day for Iron Reign, and therefore the world.

Presenting to Leadership Dallas Class of 2019

We'll be frank; we started the morning off unprepared. Our presentation was at 9. It was 8:30, and a few of us hadn't even seen the presentation before. I, for one, could feel a swell of panic as I practiced because I knew I wasn't prepared. Yet as soon as I started presenting, everything fell into place and I felt completely at ease. A year ago I never could have imagined feeling calm as I spoke to a room of 20 business people. That's what's so great about FTC: you develop skills far past building and programming. We managed to pull it off; it ended up being a fluid and cohesive presentation.

But that may not be the case every time. This Saturday we'll be going into presentation overdrive to ensure we aren't in this situation again.

The presentation was at our high school, the School of Science and Engineering, to the Leadership Dallas Class of 2019 as a part of their exploration of education in Dallas. "Founded in 1975, Leadership Dallas is the DRC’s flagship leadership development program, aimed at providing our city with an ongoing source of diverse leaders who are prepared and committed to serve as catalysts and sustainers of positive change for the quality of life in the greater Dallas area." Find more here.

There were 2 groups of about 10 people who learned about Iron Reign & FTC and toured SEM (Science Engineering Magnet) & its classes. There were employees from Big Thought, Uber, Turner Construction, Ernst & Young, and Channel 8 News to name a few. We'd especially like to name Stephanie from Channel 8 and Ryan Dyer for helping us get a website visit from Antartica. We'd been working on having a visit from all 7 continents for all of last year, and it finally came true!

After that, they got a tour of a deployment-ready MXP, full of laptops, 3D printers, EV3's, and teaching monitors. They were very interested in our SEM education and how it ties into what we are able to do as a part of Iron Reign and FTC. We discussed using our physics experience to conduct experiments for the materials we use on our robot, and SEM's freshmen Java class to do IMU coding.

We all loved how enthusiastic they were about improving Dallas and learning more about robotics in a high school education. It was a huge opportunity for us to spread STEM and FIRST to the Dallas community, and we hope to do so again in the future. We'd like to give a huge thank you to Leadership Dallas Class of 2019 for spending their morning with us.

Next Steps

We were lucky enough to talk to Leandre Johns of Uber about what the opportunities they could offer our team and our community in helping underserved communities learn about STEM.